Further toEclipses and Cuckoos, a further nine stones, unearthed on our lottie over the past month or so. Where they had lain, are now sweetcorn and globe artichokes (and one cardoon, misidentified by the garden centre and masquerading as an artichoke).

They are very similar, cardoons and artichokes. You can eat cardoons – the stems – whereas it is the bud (the large globe) of the globe artichoke that is eaten.

What’s spooky about these nine stones?

Read this: “She was already inspired by the endless variety of flint and the flint surrounding Le Pigeonnier was unique to the locality. Broken down for use in buildings and walls, the stones fell open onto moody landscapes of smoky greys and browns through which, in varying degrees of red and pink, flecks of precious chalcedony darted and danced, like sprites who had tumbled into them from the tower’s woodland backdrop and become trapped there.

She too had tumbled in. Head over heels she’d fallen, seduced by their promise of story. From stone to canvas, back and forth she went, carrying, translating with paint and brush, their ancient tales. In the way of lovers, she was in thrall to the other.

Especially the ‘egg’. When she held one half in each hand, she thought she felt them pull towards each other. An over-fanciful imagination? Perhaps.

Their ‘interiors’ were richer in colour than other pieces she was drawn to collect: swirls of earth and blood. She’d decided to have their two exposed faces polished. Now, they fit together like two pieces of a Chinese puzzle. The same but different, each interior exposing deeper dimensions and a mirror, that also absorbed and reflected back her world, her lights and shadows and no reflection ever the same twice.

Flint and feather.”

Yes, it’s an extract from my novel-in-edit, Flint and Feather.

The manuscript had been set aside for some time until very recently, I’d forgotten that the artworks created by my main character, are inspired by stones – the flint that surrounds her home (Le Pigeonnier). When split, the stones open up to beautiful and diverse interiors. No one interior is ever the same as another.

A little boy (an allotment neighbour’s son) had gifted me with a smooth black stone. Then I kept finding them. Then I started finding them split cleanly in half – to reveal an amazing diversity of colour and form in their interiors, like these in the photos.

Had they been put in my way, again and again (I have quite a pile of these now) by an unseen force or forces who want me to finish this novel? Is it my subconscious? Is it coincidence?

Whichever (and I invite you to think on this and come back to me with your thoughts) I find it odd, delightfully so, that I invent a character who is an artist whose work is inspired by stones, especially one she finds that she refers to as the Egg, which has split into two exact halves which when, “… she held one half in each hand, she thought she felt them pull towards each other.”

And now I am an artist inspired to create art from stones split in two.

I’m inclined to ask, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”

Or in this case, cuckoo. Oh, yes, there’s a cuckoo in a nest in my novel.